Galaxy Map

This artwork depicts Epsilon Eridani b, or Ægir, as a Jupiter-like planet. It also features three fictional major satellites based on the Galilean moons, scaled correctly relative to the planet.

A thread to put my art on Ægir (Epsilon Eridani b), part of my project to build this planetary system.

#astronomy #space #art #exoplanet #EpsilonEridani

Having fun this Sunday looking through the PHANGS-ALMA image atlas. Thus is a set of images and other data on 90 nearby galaxies that I am interested in comparing with Gaia DR4 star density maps, when available.

drive.google.com/file/d/1KF23...

Also, I personally think that the Norma (outer), Perseus and Local bits are all part of the same large and somewhat flocculent arm.

On the other hand if kinematic estimates seem compatible with masers sometimes they can provide interesting details for illustrations. Eg. star formation regions or molecular clouds.

Also the HIGAL map has a weird circular arc intersecting the Sun with a radius smaller than the solar circle. Don't know the cause but I'm pretty sure it is not real.

I would be cautious of kinematic distance estimates generally and especially if they show anything near the solar circle. Sometimes we are forced to use them in the fourth quadrant because there are so few maser parallax estimates available there.

TESS confirms what we saw with Kepler and K2 - on average, ***every single small red star has a planet around it***! And a short-period one at that (<30 days).

And you know what the galaxy is mostly made of?

Small red stars.

PLANETS. PLANETS EVERYWHERE!!!

Happy weekend pondering that, everyone.

They would be useful for me, at least! Maybe not for you.

Oh, all of these stars have catalog ids. Usually many. Like Wolf 359. But many do not have real names like Vega, Altair or Sirius.

I do think the results from Gaia, masers, molecular clouds and HIGAL infrared sources are pretty consistent. So the issue is not so much the data but interpreting it.

So is this ring real? Maybe?

Gaia plus HIGAL infrared sources. This has an obvious circular arc artifact that runs through the Sun. Ignore that because it cannot be real.

Gaia plus molecular clouds.

Gaia plus masers.

Gaia.

I was hoping to get an article up on my website called "Does the Milky Way have an inner ring?" today but I don't think I'm going to make it. Maybe sometime in March.

Here's a model of the ring along with various data sets I've mentioned before. Radius 24 kpc (entire galaxy). Galactic centre down

Of course most of the nearest stars (hundreds of them) are dim M-type red dwarfs. I don't expect names for all of those.

They are all labeled on these maps.

Anyone else want to support my campaign to (politely) ask the @iau-wgsn.bsky.social to finish naming the type A-K nearest stars?

I keep hoping that you'll eventually name all the A-K type stars within 10 parsecs without common names. Many don't yet have common names and providing them would help with public education about the nearest stars.

We have a hidden column on the NASA Exoplanet Archive called 'Number of exomoons' and I AM SO READY TO BUST IT OUT WHEN NEEDED.

A white, glowing egg-shaped object lies in the centre of the black-and-white image, on a dark, starry background. Glowing streaks spread upwards from the object. In the top left, a yellow arrow marked ‘Sun’ points straight down, and a blue arrow marked ‘Velocity’ points towards the 7 o’clock direction. In the bottom left, an inset shows the same object on a lighter grey starry background, filled with ragged-edged, concentric egg shapes gradiented black-to-white.

Our first glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS from Juice's science camera 😍☄️

The precious data from the mission's November observations of the interstellar comet arrived on Earth last week. Teams are now digging in to discover what they reveal.

Stay tuned for updates!

More 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...
🔭 🧪

I've started experimenting with VR development in VRChat using the Unity SDK. If you want to friend me, my VRChat id is kevinjardine.

"We have decided to stop wasting billions on recreating Apollo 60 years later and will move the stack directly to the National Air and Space Museum while spending our $$$ on actually innovative projects such as submarines for the oceans of Europa and Enceladus" ... that would be an announcement. ;-)

Given how screwed up human societies often are, I think that there has always been a deep desire to believe that somewhere, somehow, there are wiser advisers out there, be they angels, elves or Vulcans.

Completely random thought: is it really a coincidence that the Vulcans in Star Trek look like the elves in Lord of the Rings?

Of course there are many differences in detail but both play the roles of longer lived, more advanced and wiser advisers to humanity.

A nebula appears like a transparent bubble with a white edge, inside which are two hemispheres of orange clouds being blown out from the center, split by a dark vertical lane, giving the overall appearance of a see-through skull with a brain inside, as seen from above. A few stars appear with eight points, and small background galaxies can be seen around and through the outer bubble.

Astronomers are losing their minds over #NASAWebb’s latest images of the very brainy-looking nebula PMR 1. Its distinctive form is the result of a dying star expelling its outer layers: https://news.stsci.edu/4tVQccE 🔭 🧪

Birds closely related to ostriches, ducks and chickens were very much around before the asteroid that wiped out the nonavian dinosaurs. So we should respect these ancient survivors. How the other birds evolved is less clear. Apparently very quickly.

Marsupials evolved in South America and walked to Australia via Antarctica when they were all connected. It's a bigger mystery how monkeys got to South America from Africa. Rafting across the Atlantic is the current theory.

I already knew that little hyraxes and giant elephants were related but the tree of life has many other surprises. Flamingos are related to grebes, hummingbirds to swifts, sloths to armadillos.